heart's desire

this week is has been all about cleaning up small details. getting my teeth cleaned, my car's oil change, getting my broken sunglasses replaced, deciding on things to take and things to leave behind, throwing away more stuff i don't need. and the more i am doing all this, the happier i'm getting. i went online to look at and pick out a sofa sleeper and then a kitchen set. and as i was doing these things, it occurred to me that i only had to put things in the new apartment that i wanted to put in it. and then all of the sudden it occurred to me that i could decorate it with anything i wanted. and i thought to myself "if you could have any picture in your new apartment that you wanted. what would it be? and here it is. i'm going to order a cheap poster print of it. and voila. what my heart desires.

Ch ch changes

Sing it mr. Bowie!

This week has been a whirlwind of decision making and changes for me. I now have a new job, a new home, and a new city. I'm a little nervous.

Course I'm not there yet. but I have signed a whole bunch of papers and filled out a whole bunch of forms and I have a list of follow up instructions and a fair amount of packing to do. And shortly, I will be on my way. Ha. Which also leads me from David Bowie right back to Tom petty- " time to move on, time to get going...."

And maybe for the very first time in my life, my life will actually belong to me.

an american girl

i've been having this email conversation with my daughter about this, that, and the other. about various and assorted sundries. except that's not exactly right, the topics, although numerous, were not exactly "small" to us. actually the conversation has been about some fairly major things happening in our lives. her job. my job hopes. her relationship. other stuff. significant to us.

and pretty much right now, things are at a standstill for both of us. not bad. not good. just limbo. and i threw out "why do i hear tom petty playing in my head?" meaning the song lyric- "the waiting is the hardest part..."

and she writes back and says "you hear tom petty because he is the soundtrack to our lives." and goes on to explain that she has often heard snippets of tom petty lyrics in her head during prominent moments in her life.

oh she makes me laugh. because i do too. "waiting" right now because i'm waiting to hear about a job, which means i'm waiting to hear where i'll live. which means my life is basically all held up and i hate it. i just want to get "there." whereever "there" is.

but then i started reflecting on various other moments in my life and the attached lyrics- "won't back down... you can stand me up at the gates of hell, but i won't back down" for when i stood up to a boss pressing me to do something illegal and wrong. and for when my ex was pushing to move back when it wasn't safe yet."

and "the waiting" for a different situation- back when i was in love.

and "don't do me like that" for when someone was ripping my heart out.

and then i got to "an american girl" which everyone seems to think is about suicide but it's not. not in my head. in my head it's about being disillusioned by life and the things that happen to you and at a terrible moment wanting to jump over the edge because someone has let you down. and then realizing that it is up to you and nobody else but you to keep going. because nobody else is ever going to keep those promises you were raised on. because you are the only one you can ever really trust.

i seem to have that moment over and over again in my life. it's a perpetual theme song for me.

"oh yeah, all right, take it easy girl, make it last all night.. oh yeah, "i'm" an american girl."

split pea soup

so i need to learn to make homemade split pea soup. in fact, i'm going to copypaste this meatless recipe here.

" 1/2 pkg split peas + 1-2 potatoes, cook in 5 cups beef broth--can use bouillon--when it is done, separately fry 2 Tb of onion in 1/2 veg oil 1/2 butter, add the whole thing to the soup, and process. You won't miss the ham flavor, I promise. It's silky smooth, extremely filling and satisfying, and cheap, about 50¢ a serving."

sounds yummy, no?

i've been poring over sites i've found by googling "how to live on $25 of groceries a week." apparently many congressmen to pretend they know what it is like to live on foodstamps have taken this challenge and have found they can't do it. but some people have.

so rice, beans, split pea soup seem to be the big winners for being cheap and fairly healthy many of the sites i've visited recommended dumpster diving.


i'm thinking maybe a jar of peanut butter, a loaf of bread, some jelly, a box of rice, an onion, salt, the makings of split pea soup, vanilla yogurt, cheap pretzels, and a bag of apples a week ought to do it for me. maybe a can of beans. although i don't think i want to deal with cooking them from scratch.

i will also need to give up the diet coke. which i should anyway. also i will miss cottage cheese and summer fruit. such as peaches and strawberries. which are yummy. and i may get scurvy or something but maybe i'll spring for an orange occasionally.

not sure if i'll crave meat. i might. maybe i'll buy a chicken once in awhile or a hamhock.

why am i going on the cheap? well because i'm soon going to be coming up on being poor. so i'm going to start eating really cheap.

i'll let you know how i do. or maybe i'll have you over for split pea soup.

making sense of the senseless

so the news tells us today that the 97 year old Laszlo Csatary was arrested in Hungary. He was responsible for sending over 15,000 human souls to death camps and other assorted cruelties. and it seems the guy has been living in hungary under his own name since around 1997 after being discovered in canada. now he claims he was just following orders that he had to follow.

it's kind of too big to put your head around, isn't it? what do you do with something like this?

one commenter on a news blog thinks "hey, he's old, let him go."

and i'm thinking "what the hell?"

i mean really, that's more compassion than i could sum up for him. and it's one of those cases where you gotta wonder "what would jesus do?" that is, if you believed in jesus. which in fact, considering the scope and horror of the holocaust, it's kind of hard to.

it's also kind of hard to imagine why any jewish person actually believes in a god at all.

what i also wonder about is how if you are this guy - at some point- you didn't crack and say "here i am, i'm turning myself in." i mean, whether you believe in a god or not, how in the heck do you live with yourself if you done something of this magnitude. wouldn't you want someone else to punish you so that you wouldn't have to? or did it seem punishment enough that you had to hold it all in all these years?

or do you just tell yourself "hey, i was in a terrible position, ANY one in my position would have done the same. it was either kill or be killed."

except that this is not true. sure MANY would have, perhaps i can't even think that i wouldn't have if afraid for my life or the lives of my children, but i also know that there are MANY fine people who did risk their lives and did lose their lives standing up against this evil. so it's not that EVERYbody would have done the same.

there was a choice. it might have meant death for yourself, but there was a choice.

and i want to know- was the guy married? is his wife alive? does he have children? if so, how on earth would you reconcile the fact that your husband or your father was a monster?

anyway, this is a tough one for the atheist, because while a person who believes in god can say to themselves that he will be judged by god even if not by the mortals, the person who doesn't believe in god has to feel the immediacy of punishing the guy for what all he did before he ceases to exist. lest he not get any punishment at all.

but then again, where do you draw the line with that? the whole idea of punishment for crimes. because for instance even while i abhor child abusers, i do not consider the reason to incarcerate them to be the punishment aspect, i just want those people away from society where they can't harm another child ever. that's all. (mind you that if i ever found anyone to abuse my children or grandchild, you would have to hold me back from killing them with my bare hands, but that's vengeance, not punishment) but if you follow that punishment logic, the odds of this guy ever harming another human being are beyond slim and at nothing. he's 97 for pete's sake. and he holds no power anywhere. so what's he going to do to hurt someone now? so it would be different if he'd have been caught, 50 years or so ago, i guess.

so what do you do with the guy? i have to say that i just don't know. i guess, take him to court. maybe the trial will raise the consciousness of people once again of the need to always stand up against evil where-ever you can and whenever you are called to. a kind of "don't be this guy" sort of thing.

that's the only sense i can make out it all.

snapshot

i haven't seen it, but my daughter tells me of a photo she took of me while we were on vacation that a couple of people she knows have responded to. one saying "your mother looks very strong and dignified."

i like that. i'd like to appear to be a strong and dignified person. what i'd like even better is if i actually were a strong and dignified person.

ironically, i read an article today about the 10 things you should do or not do if someone dumps you, in order to preserve your dignity. you know how many of those things i did "right?" exactly 2. otherwise i was a textbook case of what not to do.

the worst things i did that i shouldn't have were that i tried to hang on and i didn't just delete him from everywhere.

which brings to mind a quote i read recently that said something to the effect "if love doesn't hold him, then what makes you think your words will? walk away."

and so yeah- completely lost my dignity on that one. completely and utterly.

am i more dignified today? have i gained some in the years since? i'd like to think so. i would actually like to think that if it happened today i'd have enough dignity to tell him to go straight to hell and then turn and walk quickly the other way. that IS what i should have done. silly me though- i loved him. and i thought somehow he'd remember that he loved me if myself or someone said the right thing. what didn't ever seem to occur to me was that if he really loved me in the first place, he wouldn't have dumped me. he would have stopped to consider the other side of things instead.

love, it truly makes you stupid, huh? and certainly not dignified.

ironically one of the things he and i disagreed about always was whether people could actually change. he thought not. i thought so. and i still think so. and so i think that quite possibly someday i actually could be a dignified person, just like the woman in the picture.

Why?

Why haven't I posted? Because I'm attempting to follow the old adage " if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.". It's a good adage. It really is.

But my lack of post can't be entirely explained by this because, well I do have good and nice things to say. I really do. Wonderful things really. About my trip, about my beautiful and accomplished daughter, about the things I am working on. So it's not really true that I have nothing nice to say. Just the problem is that these nice things keep being crowded out by some things that are upsetting me and worrying me.

But I don't dare speak of them here in this public place. The only thing I will say though is what I am feeling. And that is that I'm sad and I feel wronged and I feel helpless and I feel hopeless and I feel angry and I feel discouraged. I'm just upset.

And I've got people calling me up on the phone and offering me advice. And sympathy. And encouragement. And that's all good. These things are the life preservers, I guess. That keep a person afloat. Because even if you can't bring yourself to believe or do any of what is suggested, the prevailing feeling is that they at least care. Somebody cares.

So whatever. I guess I just try to hold together. Vent a little, sticking to my feelings only. Until I can shake off the hurt a bit. And hopefully in a spot of time, i can get to a better place and I can post about the nice things, the good things, and the wonderful things.

Until then...

Evil

Contrary to what a certain person believes, I am not evil. And I never was. This is for the record.


That is all.